‘Leila’s Brothers’ receives positive reviews at Cannes

Iranian feature ‘Leila’s Brothers’ has received positive reviews from critics at the Cannes Film Festival.

Saeed Roustaee’s latest directorial experience which is present at the 2022 edition of the event in France has grabbed the attention of critics and analysts of the world of cinema.

The Variety wrote: “If this sounds soap operatic in the slightest, credit Roustaee for ensuring the story never feels that way on screen. The helmer constructs scenes with a bustling documentary energy, studiously avoiding melodramic tropes, even when they might serve to make the narrative more engaging, less unwieldy or simply easier to digest overall.”

“Thanks to the director’s command of his material, the entanglements we witness may be unbelievably challenging and yet do not require any suspension of disbelief. This subtle, convincing emotional tour-de-force doesn’t feel as long as its generous running time,” Screendaily reviewed.

The Guardian noted: “Iranian film-maker Saeed Roustayi delivers a big, absorbing, character-driven family drama in the Italian-American style with fierce performances, a huge set-piece wedding scene and touches of Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Coppola’s The Godfather. There’s even some Arthur Miller amid the angry, painful recrimination.”

The Hollywood Reporter also mentioned: “The cast brings tremendous energy and plenty of nuance to their roles; each character is loaded with contradictions, fighting for the family or their own interests, or sometimes both, well aware they’re rarely doing the right thing.”

IMDB quoted from Deadline Magazine: “Over nearly three hours, the small dramas of these very ordinary people play out in a beautifully modulated series of mistakes and missteps, always stopping short of a final crisis or dramatic climax promising resolution. That would sound a false note; there are no false notes. Roustaee’s plotting is like a rope of liana, the family’s tribulations so closely plaited together they can never be unraveled to find a beginning or end.”

The premiere of the film at Cannes Film Festival took place, with the stars Saeed Pour-Samimi, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Taraneh Alidousti, Payman Maadi, and Roustaee in attendance.

The film is about Leila, 40, who has spent her life on caring for her parents and four brothers.

Leila comes up with a plan to run a family business in order to save them from poverty as her brothers are struggling to make ends meet.

While they desperately need financial assistance, Leila finds out that their father has secretly hidden a family heritage. That discovery causes chaos in the fragile family.

FM/FM